The prostate is one of the male reproductive organs found in the pelvis below the urinary bladder. It functions to produce and store seminal fluid which provides nutrients and fluids that are vital for the survival of sperm introduced into the vagina during reproduction. Like many other tissues, the prostate glands are also prone to develop either malignant (cancerous) or benign (non-cancerous) tumors. The American Cancer Society predicted that over 230,000 men would be diagnosed with prostate cancer and over 30,000 men would die from the disease in year 2005. In fact, prostate cancer is one of the most common male cancers in western societies, and is the second leading form of malignancy among American men. Current treatment methods for prostate cancer include hormonal therapy, radiation therapy, surgery, chemotherapy, photodynamic therapy, and combination therapy. The selection of a treatment generally varies depending on the stage of the cancer. However, many of these treatments affect the quality of life of the patient, especially those men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer over age 50. For example, the use of hormonal drugs is often accompanied by side effects such as osteoporosis and liver damage. Such side effects might be mitigated by the use of treatments that are more selective or specific to the tissue being responsible for the disease state, and avoid non-target tissues like the bones or the liver. As described herein, prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) represents a target for such selective or specific treatments.
Surgical removal of malignant disease constitutes one of the most common and effective therapeutic for primary treatment for cancer. Resection of all detectable malignant lesions results in no detectable return of the disease in approximately 50% of all cancer patients' and may extend life expectancy or reduce morbidity for patients in whom recurrence of the cancer is seen. Not surprisingly, surgical methods for achieving more quantitative cytoreduction are now receiving greater scrutiny.
Resection of all detectable malignant lesions results in no detectable return of the disease in approximately 50% of all cancer patients and may extend life expectancy or reduce morbidity for patients in whom recurrence of the cancer is seen. Given the importance of total resection of the malignant lesions, it is beneficial to ensure that the malignant lesions are accurately and completely identified. Identification of malignant tissue during surgery is currently accomplished by three methods. First, many tumor masses and nodules can be visually detected based on abnormal color, texture, and/or morphology. Thus, a tumor mass may exhibit variegated color, appear asymmetric with an irregular border, or protrude from the contours of the healthy organ. A malignant mass may also be recognized tactilely due to differences in plasticity, elasticity or solidity from adjacent healthy tissues. Finally, a few cancer foci can be located intraoperatively using fluorescent dyes that flow passively from the primary tumor into draining lymph nodes. In this latter methodology, fluorescent (sentinel) lymph nodes can be visually identified, resected and examined to determine whether cancer cells have metastasized to these lymph nodes.
PSMA is named largely due to its higher level of expression on prostate cancer cells; however, its particular function on prostate cancer cells remains unresolved. PSMA is over-expressed in the malignant prostate tissues when compared to other organs in the human body such as kidney, proximal small intestine, and salivary glands. PSMA also express in the neo-vasculature of most of the solid tumors. Though PSMA is expressed in brain, that expression is minimal, and most ligands of PSMA are polar and are not capable of penetrating the blood brain barrier. PSMA is a type II cell surface membrane-bound glycoprotein with −110 kD molecular weight, including an intracellular segment (amino acids 1-18), a transmembrane domain (amino acids 19-43), and an extensive extracellular domain (amino acids 44-750). While the functions of the intracellular segment and the transmembrane domains are currently believed to be insignificant, the extracellular domain is involved in several distinct activities. PSMA plays a role in central nervous system, where it metabolizes N-acetyl-aspartyl glutamate (NAAG) into glutamic and N-acetyl aspartic acid. Accordingly, it is also sometimes referred to as an N-acetyl alpha linked acidic dipeptidase (NAALADase). PSMA is also sometimes referred to as a folate hydrolase I (FOLH I) or glutamate carboxypeptidase (GCP II) due to its role in the proximal small intestine where it removes γ-linked glutamate from poly-y-glutamated folate and a-linked glutamate from peptides and small molecules.
PSMA also shares similarities with human transferrin receptor (TfR), because both PSMA and TfR are type II glycoproteins. More specifically, PSMA shows 54% and 60% homology to TfR1 and TfR2, respectively. However, though TfR exists only in dimeric form due to the formation of inter-strand sulfhydryl linkages, PSMA can exist in either dimeric or monomeric form.
Unlike many other membrane-bound proteins, PSMA undergoes rapid internalization into the cell in a similar fashion to cell surface bound receptors like vitamin receptors. PSMA is internalized through clathrin-coated pits and subsequently can either recycle to the cell surface or go to lysosomes. It has been suggested that the dimer and monomer form of PSMA are inter-convertible, though direct evidence of the interconversion is being debated. Even so, only the dimer of PSMA possesses enzymatic activity, and the monomer does not.
Though the role of the PSMA on the cell surface of the prostate cancer cells remains unknown, it has been recognized that PSMA represents a viable target for the selective and/or specific delivery of biologically active agents, including diagnostic agents, imaging agents, and therapeutic agents to such prostate cancer cells.
The radio-immunoconjugate of the anti-PSMA monoclonal antibody (mAb) 7E11, known as the PROSTASCINT® scan, is currently being used to diagnose prostate cancer metastasis and recurrence. However, this agent tends to produce images that are challenging to interpret (Lange, P. H. PROSTASCINT scan for staging prostate cancer. Urology 2001, 57, 402-406; Haseman, M. K.; et al. Cancer Biother Radiopharm 2000, 15, 131-140; Rosenthal, S. A.; et al. Tech Urol 2001, 7, 27-37). It binds to an intracellular epitope of PSMA in necrotic prostate cancer cells. More recently, monoclonal antibodies have been developed that bind to the extracellular domain of PSMA and have been radiolabeled and shown to accumulate in PSMA-positive prostate tumor models in animals. However, diagnosis and tumor detection using monoclonal antibodies has been limited by the low permeability due to their large size (150,000 Da) and slow clearance from non-targeted tissue. Moreover, the selective targeting of radio—or optical imaging agents either for imaging or therapeutic purposes is challenging due to their long half-life (˜30 days). Especially, patients have to be stay in the hospital for longer days and spend more money on medical bills.
Two promising approaches to fluorescence-guided surgery are currently under intense investigation for use in the clinic. In one method, an activatable NIR fluorescent probe, which is minimally fluorescent in the steady state due to its proximity to an attached quencher, becomes highly fluorescent upon release of the quencher in malignant tissue. One of the most commonly used release mechanisms involves incorporation of a peptide sequence between the dye and the quencher that can be specifically cleaved by a tumor-enriched protease (i.e. cathepsins, caspases and matrix metalloproteinases). A major advantage of this strategy lies in the absence of fluorescence in tissues that lack the activating enzyme, allowing tissues along the excretion pathway (e.g. kidneys, bladder, liver) to remain nonfluorescent unless they fortuitously express the cleaving enzyme. Such tumor-activated NIR dyes can also generate substantial fluorescence in the tumor mass as long as the malignant lesion is enriched in the cleaving protease and the released dye is retained in the tumor. The major disadvantage of this methodology arises from the poor tumor specificities of many of the relevant hydrolases (most of which are also expressed in healthy tissues undergoing natural remodeling or experiencing inflammation). Moreover, the abundance of the desired proteases may vary among tumor masses, leading to slow or no activation of fluorescence in some malignant lesions and rapid development of fluorescence in others. Most of the time, these activatable peptides contain over 20 amino acids linked via peptide bonds that could lead to higher molecular weights, longer lead time (24 h), cleavage of peptide bonds by peptidase in the circulation, high false positive results and very high manufacturing costs.
Other release mechanisms that activatable dyes use are pH difference between circulation and within the tumor or change in redox potential.
In the second, a fluorescent dye is conjugated to a tumor-specific targeting ligand that causes the attached dye to accumulate in cancers that over-express the ligand's receptor. While PSMA-targeted antibody-NIR dye conjugates have not yet been entered to clinical trials for fluorescence-guided surgery of cancer, several types of NIR dyes have been conjugated to monoclonal antibodies such as Her-2 with the intent of clinical development. Unfortunately, most of these dyes are tethered to antibodies non-specifically via amide, disulfide, or maleimide chemistry using either lysine or cysteine residues in the protein leading to heterogeneous chemical entities which result in variable affinities, efficacies, PK and safety profiles. Moreover, maleimide and disulfide bonds are known to be unstable in the circulation (half-life-≤2 h). On the other hand, lack of precise structural definition may limit progression of these conjugates into the clinical use due to challenges associated with the production process and safety. Moreover, production of these antibodies is highly expensive when compared to small molecular ligands. In contrast, small molecule ligand (Mr>0.5 Da), can penetrate solid tumors rapidly, and clears from PSMA-negative tissues in <2 h, shows high tumor-to-background ratios, easy of synthesis, and stable during the synthesis and storage.
Despite all the advantages those small molecular ligands have, development of NIR dye that maintains or enhances the properties of the small molecule is challenging. Recently, a variety of low molecular weight inhibitors of PSMA have been conjugated to visible light wave length dyes (400-600 nm) such as fluorescein and rhodamine and tested in in animal models [Kularatne S A, Wang K, Santhapuram H K, Low P S. Mol Pharm. 2009 May-June; 6(3):780-9] or in cells in culture [Liu T, Nedrow-Byers J R, Hopkins M R, Berkman C E. Bioorg Med Chem Lett. 2011 Dec. 1; 21(23)] or in human blood samples (He W, Kularatne S A, Kalli K R, Prendergast F G, Amato R J, Klee G G, Hartmann L C, Low P S. Int J Cancer. 2008 Oct. 15; 123(8):1968-73).
The visible light wave length dyes are not optimal for intra-operative image-guided surgery as these dyes are associated with a relatively high level of nonspecific background light due to the presence of collagen in the tissues. Hence the signal to noise ratio from these conventional compounds is low. Moreover, the absorption of visible light by biological chromophores, in particular hemoglobin, limits the penetration depth to a few millimeters. Thus tumors that are buried deeper than a few millimeters in the tissue typically remain undetected. Furthermore ionization equilibrium of fluorescein (pKa=6.4) leads to pH-dependent absorption and emission over the range of 5 to 9. Therefore, the fluorescence of fluorescein-based dyes is quenched at low pH (below pH 5).
Therefore, NIR dyes conjugated to small molecule ligands that target PSMA [(a) Humblet V, Lapidus R, Williams L R, Tsukamoto T, Rojas C, Majer P, Hin B, Ohnishi S, De Grand A M, Zaheer A, Renze J T, Nakayama A, Slusher B S, Frangioni J V. Mol Imaging. 2005 October-December; 4(4):448-62.; (b) Thomas M, Kularatne S A, Qi L, Kleindl P, Leamon C P, Hansen M J, Low P S.; (c) Chen Y, Dhara S, Banerjee S R, Byun Y, Pullambhatla M, Mease R C, Pomper M G. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Dec. 18; 390(3):624-9; (d) Nakajima T, Mitsunaga M, Bander N H, Heston W D, Choyke P L, Kobayashi H. Bioconjug Chem. 2011 Aug. 17; 22(8):1700-5.; (e) Chen Y, Pullambhatla M, Banerjee S R, Byun Y, Stathis M, Rojas C, Slusher B S, Mease R C, Pomper M G. Bioconjug Chem. 2012 Dec. 19; 23(12):2377-85.; (f) Laydner H, Huang S S, Heston W D, Autorino R, Wang X, Harsch K M, Magi-Galluzzi C, Isac W, Khanna R, Hu B, Escobar P, Chalikonda S, Rao P K, Haber G P, Kaouk J H, Stein R J. Urology. 2013 February; 81(2):451-6.; (g) Kelderhouse L E, Chelvam V, Wayua C, Mahalingam S, Poh S, Kularatne S A, Low P S. Bioconjug Chem. 2013 Jun. 19; 24(6):1075-80.] have been tested as imaging agents in murine models of prostate cancer.
While these PSMA-targeted NIR dyes showed some labeling of prostate cancer cells in culture, they had very weak fluorescence in PSMA-expressing prostate tumor xenograft animal models. For example, the molecules described by, Humblet et al have shown very low tumor accumulation and florescence in the tumor xenograft models. It may be due the lack of proper spacer between the ligand the NIR dye may have hindered the binding of ligand to the binding pocket in PSMA. On the other hand, phosphorous based ligands have less affinity for PSMA when compared to DUPA. Moreover, phosphorous based ligands are difficult to synthesize, involve multiple steps, and will be expensive to manufacture.
PSMA-targeted NIR agent reported in Chen et al has taken over 20 h to reach the tumor and 72 h clear from the non-targeted tissues. Also notably, this PSMA-targeted NIR dye has very slowly skin clearance. While binding epitope of PSMA in transfected cells that they used can be artificial, it had very low uptake and low fluorescence in PSMA transfected prostate cancer cell tumor. Furthermore, there is substantial non-specific uptake of this molecule in all other tissues and there is accumulation and fluorescence in PSMA-negative cells indicating non-specific and non-targeted nature of NIR conjugate reported by Chen et al.
Chen et al and Laydner et al also have conjugated a small molecule ligand to IR800CW (a NIR dye). IR800CW is asymmetrical dye with activated carboxylic acid with n-hydroxysuccinimide ester (NHS). This is an extremely expensive molecule to synthesize and even more to purchase from commercially available resources (1 g is over $60,000). IR800CW also has the disadvantage that it is not stable during the synthesis due to two reasons: (a) hydrolysis of NHS ester, (b) hydrolysis of vinyl ether. The lack of stability of IR800CW conjugates during synthesis leads to formation of over 60% of undesired byproducts. This requires complex purification techniques indicating path for higher production cost, higher waiting period for clinical translation, and surgeons and patients will not have access to the drug.
Laydner et al conjugated a PSMA ligand to IR800CW via a long peptide space (6 amino acids) and bifunctional linker with NHS and maleimide. In addition to all the disadvantages caused by IR800CW, this PSMA-targeted IR800CW conjugate has a complicated synthesis scheme requiring synthesis in five stages (synthesis of ligand, conjugation of ligand to bifunctional linker via maleimide functional group, synthesis of peptide linker, conjugation of peptide linker to IR800CW, conjugation of peptide linker-IR800CW to ligand-bifunctional linker via amide bond) in multiple steps. Therefore, the manufacturing costs hamper the effective production of this molecule for clinical purposes. The synthesis scheme for these molecules is further complicated due to multiple chiral centers in the molecule. Peptide spacers, however, possess multiple chiral centers (stereoisomers) typically necessitating the need for production and assessment of all stereoisomers for FDA clearance. For example, a peptide spacer possessing only 3 amino acids (i.e. 3 chiral centers), would require toxicity profiles for 8 different drug products since these heterogeneous mixtures could result in different affinities, efficacies, PK and safety profiles.
The small molecule ligand used by Laydner et al is GluNHCONHCys-SH. The free thiol moiety in Cys tends to oxidize hence the molecule has to be handled under argon or nitrogen environment and generally leads to an unstable molecule. GluNHCONHCys-SH ligand is conjugated to bifunctional linker via maleimide reaction. It is well reported that reactions between thiols and maleimide are reversible and yield 50% of the diseased product. Moreover, maleimide bonds are not stable in circulation in the human body, hence use of maleimide bonds risk the release of the non-targeted dye leading to non-specific uptake thereof.
Kelderhouse et al conjugated DUPA-linker-Cys to Alexa flour 647 and Dylight 750 to DUPA via maleimide group. Again, these molecules have all the disadvantages associated with maleimide. Moreover, these low wave length NIR dyes, while being commercially available are very expensive. While molecules were tested on experimental metastatic mouse model, images were inconclusive.
Liu et al also reported PSMA-targeted NIR dye and some in vitro data but no animal data were reported. The lack of a proper spacer between the ligand and the NIR dye may have attributed to the lack of vivo data. Moreover, this dye has many drawbacks as other reported compounds. It is a phosphorous based ligand and asymmetrical dye. So, it has disadvantages described of both phosphorous based ligands as well as asymmetrical NIR dyes.
Nakajima et al reported anti-PSMA antibody (J591) conjugated to ICG. Unfortunately, this compound took 72 hours to clear from the other healthy tissues such as liver. In addition, the compound remained in circulation for 6 days indicating that it will remain the body for over 30 days in human body. Moreover, ICG was tethered to J591 non-specifically via amide using either lysine residues in the protein leading to heterogeneous chemical entities which result in variable affinities, efficacies, PK and safety profiles. Lack of precise structural definition may limit progression of these conjugates for clinical use due to challenges associated with the production process and safety.
Higher non-specificity and slow clearance from the skin of reported PSMA-targeted NIR dyes may be due to poor pharmacokinetic (PK) properties of these compounds.
Thus, there remains a need for a dye substance that can be used to specifically target PSMA expressing cancer cells or neo-vasculature of diseased tissue with increased stability, better PK properties, higher solubility, fast tumor accumulation, high fluorescence, fast skin clearance, and higher tumor-to-background ratios (TBR) for use in vivo tissue imaging and to use in image-guided surgery.